Wednesday, 10 July 2013

Looking Skeptically at Trolls

‘They see me trolling:
What can we do about online abuse’ was a lively Soho Skeptics event which
took a semi-serious look at the ‘trolling’ phenomenon. The speaker Helen Lewis
provided a definition of ‘trolling’, followed by an overview of the different
types of trolls and examples of each. She then gave a whistle stop tour of why
anyone would troll, the state of the law and what can be done about them and
ended on a positive note.

She relied heavily on academic Claire Hardaker for this
talk. The term ‘troll’ is slightly contentious simply because it is a media and
increasingly academic construct. In my view there are as many types of troll as
there are people interacting the internet at any one time; every one of them is
an individual with different motivations. However wiki has a relatively wide definition;
‘a troll is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or
upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in
an online community (such as a forum, chat room, or blog), either accidentally
or with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response
or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion’. [Wikipedia] She
included the alternative definition; ‘the lesser known of two people in a
twitter argument’.

She outlined the four types of troll (adding another type in
questions later on);

Grief trolls: These are a problem on Facebook where
open/public memorial pages are set up for those who have died in accidents etc,
usually tragically young. This is clearly a sensitive time for family and
friends and so deliberately hurtful remarks can be devastating. One so-called
‘grief troll’, Sean
Duffy was found guilty under malicious communications legislation and
jailed for 18 weeks. Magistrates also gave him an Asbo and banned him from
using social networking sites for five years.

She noted the difference between ‘disturbed’ people and
‘professional’ grief trolls. The latter type are people satirising ‘drive-by
grief’ or ‘pseudo-grief’, outraged by themedia focus on tragic young white middle class deaths. However they are
careless of the fact it still causes families grief when they leave comments.
Just recently Reece
Elliott received a jail
sentence for two years four months for extreme behaviour on the RIP Caitlin
Talley facebook page and other abuse.

Abuse trolls: This is the most usual type of troll, most
often talked about in the press, after grief trolls. She began with various
examples; Reece Messer who was given a formal warning for the trolling of Tom
Daley last year; Linford House was punished by restorative justice and met war
widows to apologise for his picture of poppy burning. She said that most police
forces attitudes towards this level of trolling was maturing and becoming more
proportional. However in her overview of the serious and thoroughly disturbing
co-ordinated group abuse of feminist blogger Anita
Sarkeesian, she stated that no one has yet been arrested, charged or outed
as co-ordinated. She emphasised here that though the anonymity is an issue, in
this case, ‘the abusers have effectively "gamified" trolling’ which
is a worrying development.

Sub cultural trolls: These self-identify as ‘trolls’ and make
a career out of it. She suggests that they are as ‘weird’ in real life as they
are online. One extended example was taken from Gawker
research concerning the outing of Reddit troll, Michael Brutsch. Reddit is a user generated
content site that drives much of the internet and is a useful tool to keep
abreast of many legitimate subjects. However there are elements of it that are
distasteful and Brutsch, as Violentacrez, was so popular in his ‘moderation’ of
certain subreddits that Reddit
honoured him with a special ‘pimp’s hat’ user icon. Any outrage about such
forums leads to users complaining about having their freedom of speech removed
– she suggested that a balance should be struck between free speech and a need
to stop online abuse. Astonishingly Reddit is owned by the same company that
owns Condé Nast.

Professional trolls: Liz Jones given as an example, her and
other columnists in the mainstream press use the same methods as trolls but for
career purposes rather than amusement. Rod Liddle, Jeremy Clarkson etc have
said things they don’t believe, but said it for effect because it gets newspaper
websites a lot of hits. It's hard to make Internet journalism pay, therefore
professional trolls are the revenue drivers of news sites. When are they going
to go too far?

Covert trolls: this category is an interesting one. They are
not bad but appear to waste time, they are polite yet distract from or derail
main arguments on a thread or supply an endless bombardment of tweets. Are they
merely bored?

Why do people troll?

The first reason she gave I am euphemistically going to call
an ‘online
disinhibition effect’.
This is ‘a loosening (or complete abandonment) of social restrictions and
inhibitions that would otherwise be present in normal face-to-face interaction
during interactions with others on the Internet’.

The second is ‘showing off’. Alice Marwick has done a lot of
work on social media attention seeking where people use the internet to air
views that they know are socially unacceptable; people do not get upset about
negative attention because they know the views they are expressing aren’t theirs,
merely presenting a character.

The final reason she mentioned was this ‘gamification’. As
Terry Pratchett said ‘the IQ of a mob is the IQ of its most stupid member
divided by the number of mobsters’, individuals in a group can be encouraged
and affirmed with ‘internet points’ amongst their like-minded peers on sites
like Reddit and 4chan.

The Law

DPP have decided that there far too many prosecutions on
spurious grounds so they will now only prosecute for public order offences such
as threats and violence, or harassment. If what the troll is saying is merely offensive,
obscene or false then they will be less concerned. However despite the recent guidelines,
this has yet to filter down to individual forces; cases
against trolls in the aftermath of the Woolwich attack were commenced then
stopped.

How do we deal with
trolls

People have called for the ending of anonymity on the net
but she said this wasn’t the main problem. It’s the lack of consequences; you
do it once, get away with it and then carry on, for whatever reason. As for the
‘press to block’ button, this doesn’t always work because of ongoing abuse
across different social media.

Rather interesting is the difference from trolling and
online abuse. Trolling seems to be more like fishing in some cases; they will
be offensive to people in the public eye and when they respond, they become a
target. Here she gave the example of Mary Beard, who reversed the trolling and
outed the owner of Don’t
Start Me Off.

Another contentious area has been Facebook and ‘trolling’
pages. Faced with pressure from women’s groups and advertisers,
they recently updated
their policies so that pages can be taken down.

When dealing with public website comment/discussion boards,
as an editor, she suggests very clear social media policies are required. She
now thinks of it like a pub and simply bars/blocks people who persistently
break the rules.

Good News

Lewis ended on a positive note saying this was a
transitional time and the number of trolls that you hear about in the press are
decreasing. People are increasingly living their lives online and therefore
people are testing the limits. Technology is making it easier for people to be
caught. Her final point suggested that we never hear about heavy breathing
phone calls any more, therefore trolls will perhaps also disappear – people are
getting bored of them.

My Thoughts

I would add that the number of troll types is unlimited –
what about ‘Vexatious/Critical Trolls’ – people who constantly ask their local
council/police/local authority for FOI requests in the interests of
transparency. Or are they ‘Citizen Trolls’ that criticise or question authorities?
Or those people that are simply bored? The article, also quoting Claire
Hardaker which probably inspired this talk is here.

The newspaper angle is also interesting. Internet journalism
doesn’t pay and so sites are being subsidised by the paper versions (currently)
and advertising. Do advertisers care about the quality of journalism? Are they
only interested in website hits?

She didn’t really differentiate between trolling and online
abuse – this remains woolly in my opinion. It seems that an irritating exchange
on twitter is not abusive; however a sustained threatening attack on an
individual over many platforms is undoubtedly online abuse.

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About Me

Previously of London, currently of Croatia. Seeing stuff and writing about it. The more obscure the better. Mostly writing here at the moment http://contrarytowers.blogspot.hr/
Follow @clareangela for a wide range of live tweeted talks.